Thinking About Blogging

You've all been on my mind lately. Gee, I should blog, I think to myself as I am:
a) researching travel arrangements for our trips to Sevilla in May, Galicia (northwest Spain) in June or Denia, just south of here in a couple of weeks - a new one thrown into the mix.
b) grocery shopping and/or cooking
c) helping with homework
d) any of the other daily tasks that are hard to identify, define and justify

To sum up the last month+ we have been busy making big plans:
*Eugene is going to walk for a month on the Camino de Santiago, the pilgrammage to St. James, that runs 800 km. from the French border to Santiago de Compostela close to the northwest coast of Spain.
*We're going to Sevilla, the home of flamenco music and dancing, in early May for 5 days.
*At the end of June we'll be in Galicia, the Northwest province of Spain, on the Atlantic coast, for two weeks with my parents. Planning has consumed the better part of 2 weeks.
*Matthew and I went to a FREE Cure concert put on by MTV Spain in La Ciudad de Las Artes y Las Ciencias...can you find us? http://www.mtv.es/musica/actualidad/noticias/116801-the-cure-triunfa-el-mtv-winter
*Fallas has begun in Valencia. It is arguably the biggest festival in Europe. www.fallasfromvalencia.com From March 1-19 there are major firecrackers (sounds like war) every day all day, but mostly at 2pm. At 2 there are 5 minutes of solid, loud, bomb-like, firecrackers in the center plaza. They are so loud that if you are close, your clothes compress from the sound waves. They are *that* loud. Toddlers on up are lighting firecrackers in the streets at all hours. Apparently it only gets worse until March 19, the grand culmination, where they burn all the fallas, the paper and wood artistic constructions that various groups contruct. There are huge bonfires in the streets with these things! There are concerts, fireworks, various processions and rituals, falleras, people in traditional fancy Valencian dress doing traditional things. Can you tell we haven't actually experienced this fully yet? We're learning as we go.
*A new friend of ours, Julia, has invited us to spend time at her vacation home in Denia, a coastal town about an hour down the coast from here over the two-week break we have starting this Saturday. We will go there for a few days a week from Monday to relax a little.

We're at grading time in school. We received Kerline's grades and she is doing remarkably well given the multitude of challenges placed before her. She is now passing all her classes and as promised, she just got her ears pierced as a reward for her hard work. She's thrilled and so are we! We are also very excited to hear from Jolie and Eva's teachers and we feel very confident in the work they are producing in class. Their Spanish is coming along beautifully and we are so proud of all our girls!!! They are brillant!!!!!

Spring has sprung here in Valencia, the blooms on the first-flowering trees have already bloomed and faded and leaves are sprouting on almost all deciduous foliage. Today was particularly warm and I started this blog sitting out on the balcony in the warm spring air, sipping a glass of wine, enjoying the solitude, until the kids came home. But the great thing is that their homework time is greatly diminished in the sense of struggling through the language issues. Jolie and Kerline work pretty independently with only periodic questions or help. Eva needs guidance but really only as supervision and as someone to listen to her do her daily reading. You should hear her read in Spanish!!! Wow. And Eva is writing in cursive as is the way they teach writing here, cursive before print. And now I get that philosophy, less confusion between b, d, p, and q. My 6 y.o. writes in cursive! Little sponge.

So, that's us for the last month. Sorry for the neglect on the blog, other things have consumed me and will continue to until I wrap up these travel plans for the next few months. But we are on a little high right now and things are going very well!

God is always good.